UFC President Dana White doesn’t exactly hide what the UFC’s endgame is — and on The Jim Rome Show, he confirmed it in plain language: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a target for a UFC-style overhaul. What boxing resisted, BJJ may not be ready for.
“This is three years in the making,” White told Rome, referring to the newly launched UFC Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu league. “Me and the Fertittas ended up buying the UFC because of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. We got into it, started to meet some of the martial artists, and then we became so obsessed with it that, you know, it ended up leading us to buy the UFC.”
That nostalgic tone is a far cry from his previous statements over the years, where he dismissed BJJ tournaments as “boring.” Now, the same sport he once ridiculed is being touted as the UFC’s next big investment.
“Basically what we’re doing is we’re building some structure inside the sport of Brazilian jiu-jitsu,” White said. “Millions of people around the world compete in jiu-jitsu. There are big tournaments where people win big money, and we’re going to put structure to it.”
That “structure” isn’t hard to decode. It looks exactly like what the UFC already applies in MMA: centralized rankings, controlled matchmaking, and titles that are wholly owned by the promotion itself.
“When you come to the UFC, in your weight class, you will be ranked in the top 10, top 15, and then there will be a world champion in each weight class,” White explained.
That model has worked for the UFC’s bottom line. But it’s sparked ongoing controversy — especially in boxing circles, where the UFC’s lobbying efforts to amend the Ali Act have been met with fierce pushback. Under current law, no boxing promoter is allowed to control the championship or martial artist rankings. If the UFC succeeds in changing that, it would let them apply their MMA framework to boxing as well — a model many critics say is fundamentally exploitative.
“Because the sport has become so greedy, nobody is ever thinking about the future of the sport; it’s about how much money we can put in our pocket right here, right now,” White said in 2013.
“So essentially what you get at the end is two multi-millionaire [boxers] who step in the ring and do everything they can to avoid a fight.”
The irony is thick. Critics of the UFC point out that its own martial artists — even champions — often earn far less than boxers at the top.
Case in point: UFC Atlanta, June 2025. The full disclosed salaries from the event painted a grim picture:
Kamaru Usman: $300,000
Rose Namajunas: $500,000 ($250K to show, $250K to win)
Rodolfo Bellato: $12,000
Malcolm Wellmaker: $24,000
Kris Moutinho: $14,000
Oumar Sy: $26,000
Multiple martial artists on the card walked away with less than $30,000 — amounts dwarfed by what undercard boxers often earn on a mid-tier card.
Even Terence Crawford, in a conversation with Kamaru Usman and Henry Cejudo, didn’t mince words:
“Boxers get paid more than MMA stars, it’s no comparison.”
The UFC’s sister boxing venture, TKO Boxing, is reportedly implementing a similar tiered pay structure:
Unranked 10-round martial artists: $20,000
Rank #5–#10: $50,000
Championship challengers: $375,000
Champions: $750,000
Compared to elite boxing, where top stars routinely command eight or nine figures, this structure seems closer to cost control than martial artist empowerment.
Meanwhile, the cultural divide between boxers and MMA stars continues to flare. Last year, Devin Haney shaded Sean O’Malley over a potential cross-sport bout. O’Malley fired first:
“Boxers are f****** p*****. Devin Haney is a b****… I’ll put a million dollars on me versus him, no time limit.”
Haney responded on X:
“I don’t fight for a million dollars like you… let’s do a boxing fight and give us a shot at making real money.”
The numbers back Haney up. While UFC’s branding machine has built a global empire, the revenue distribution remains lopsided — and that’s exactly what critics fear will happen to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
As it stands, UFC BJJ is still in its early days. But Dana White’s pitch — dropped on a mainstream sports talk show — felt less like a love letter to martial arts and more like a strategic broadcast to investors and media-rights buyers.
He’s not hiding it. In his own words:
“We’re going to put a structure to it.”
The only question is whether Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu will benefit from that structure — or be buried under it.
